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Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Casting Shadows

If I may summarize the current American societal narrative being presented by our "free press" for mass belief:

"Trump is the problem with America and Vladimir Putin is Satan."

It looks like part #1 is being contested, and part #2 is still hanging-in.

Politics is the profession of delivering emotionally-willing people to the business strategies of the oligarchs. Political systems are big, and have a lot of inertia, since the oligarchs are slow to change with the times. They are quite protected from the times, and slow to notice. Politicians, as a class, can turn on a dime, but not individual politicians. Individual politicians usually have to be traded in for a new model, when their schtick starts losing the audience.

Neither a good nor a bad thing about Trump-the-politician is that he can turn on a dime his own self. Of course he is lying; his lips are moving. Most living American politicians are serial liars. It's their actions that are differently good and bad for society. It's hard to see what agenda they need to deliver us to, because that's secret.

There are power struggles among our owners. I think we are going through one, now. It's a secret, too.

Trump is not the operative of the Clinton-Bush-neocon camp, is he? What are the actual interests of his oligarchic consortium?

Hell, who are his oligarchs? Who are their Dick Cheneys and Carl Roves?

All I can see is the shadows the puppets are casting from behind the sheet.

Some people around me are pretty excited by the show. Some are yawning.

Instead of acknowledging their own responsibility for the angst in America, the Democrats have countered the demagogue in chief’s long list of scapegoats to blame for our problems, beginning with immigrants, with an even more absurd and much shorter “list” of their own: Putin did it!Thus was born the red-baiting revival of the Cold War—but without a Red to attack, desperately offering up Putin, a born-again Russian Orthodox and Peter the Great clone, to explain away the Democratic leadership’s own well-deserved repudiation in the last election. Trump ruthlessly exploited the pain in America; the Clintonistas blindly ignored it. End of story.Except it isn’t. The Democrats are now the party of warmongers, and no clearer evidence is needed than the tweet from their Senate leader, Charles Schumer, issued as Donald Trump was en route for his eventual meeting with Putin, saying Trump “is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies … his duty is to protect the American people from foreign threats, not to sell out our democracy to Putin.”

One thing that’s not receiving enough attention in the respective Assange and Russia coverage is to what extent both protagonists are needed in each other’s narratives to keep each of these alive. Without explicitly linking Assange to Russia, allegations against him lose a lot, if not most, of their credibility. Likewise, if Assange is not put straight in the middle of the Russia story, it too loses much. Linking them is the gift that keeps on giving for the US intelligence community and the Democratic party...Julian Assange is a journalist, and a damn good one at that. The silence in the Anglo -and international- media about his case is shameful and deafening. So is the smear campaign that’s been going on for over a decade. How many women have been turned against the man by the false Swedish rape charges? Condemning someone to isolation without access to daylight or medical care goes way beyond shameful.It’s time to end this horror show, not prolong or deepen it. But the power of international intelligence services is at stake, and they’re going to go to great lengths to impose that power. The US has already even claimed that freedom of speech, i.e. its entire Constitution, does not apply to non-Americans.

A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the president’s office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to The Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the U.K. within the next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week.

​Ray sends this article from Pepe Escobar about the Russian big-stick. Russia is still speaking softly, but have you looked at that big stick lately?

(Trump and Putin should talk. Really. Let's all be reasonable. This is expensive and it is going to hurt everybody.)

Yet now this is a whole new ball game as the US faces a formidable adversary that, as Martyanov carefully details, deploys five crucial capabilities.Command, control, communications, computers, intel, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities equal to or better than the US.Electronic warfare capabilities equal to or better than the US.New weapons systems equal to or better than the US.Air defense systems that are more than a match for US airpower.Long-range subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles that threaten the US Empire of Bases and even the entire US mainland.

Russia quietly sold almost all of it's holdings of US Treasuries in April and May. That was a move based on reduction of total financial-sector risk to Russia. What is Russia replacing those T-bills with, to minimize risk exposure?

Eleni sends: Lunatic Politics Part 2: It's Impossible to Have a Conversation, by Mike Kreiger

When Gallup recently asked Americans what the most important (non-economic) problem facing the country today is, the

​fraction

of people saying

​"

Russia

​"​

was so low they couldn’t even attribute a number to it.
Think about that. We’re being divided into two camps of increasingly insane and angry people because of hysteria surrounding an issue nobody even cares about. As usual, we can thank mass media for turning this topic into its singular obsession as well as promoting an environment of cultural insanity and stupidity.

​ ​

As a result, people aren’t having intelligent conversations with one another. They’re just yelling at each other. The dialogue feels more like a political hunger games where people see everything as a linguistic competition of kill or be killed. Language itself has become debased as individuals try to one up each other with name calling and hyperbole... A major problem with today’s charged political environment is too many people have become too attached to outcomes. Whether that outcome is removing Trump from office, or reelecting him. If you’ll do anything to achieve your goals, anything to grab power, or deploy any tactics to prove your point then you will become the monsters you claim to be fighting. Too many of us are becoming passionate, engaged monsters and it won’t lead to anything good.https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/07/19/lunatic-politics-part-2-its-becoming-impossible-to-have-a-conversation/

​The Kremlin announces receipt of an invitation of President Putin to visit President Trump in Washington DC later this year.​

In the meantime, Ushakov hinted that Trump and Putin could potentially meet at the G20 summit in Argentina this November.

Donald Trump "may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretenses.""I think we are in a very, very grave period for the world," Kissinger added.

Israel has rejected a Russian proposal to keep Iranian forces in Syria at least 100 kilometers from the Syrian-Israeli recognized ceasefire line along the Golan Heights, Reuters reports, while Israeli leadership has further threatened to hold Assad responsible "for any Iranian aggression".According to the breaking report, which cites an unnamed Israeli official, the issue came up during a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a visiting Russian delegation led by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov:The official said that Netanyahu told Lavrov "we will not allow the Iranians to establish themselves even 100 kilometres from the border."And crucially, the official paraphrased the following exchange from the closed door meeting: "Netanyahu told Lavrov Israel will maintain freedom of operation against Iranian entrenchment in all of Syria and will see Assad responsible for any Iranian aggression against Israel from Syrian territory because Assad is the one hosting the Iranians."

Today's update:Russia had rejected such Israeli claims last fall. It again rejected similar claims in May. It will also debunk the current nonsense. No such offer was made. Israel 'rejected' something it invented itself and has the chutzpah to make even more lunatic demands:According to the Israeli official, Netanyahu gave Lavrov a list of demands regarding Iranian military presence in Syria:Iran needs to take all of its long range missiles and weapons out of Syria.Iran needs to stop the production of precision munitions in Syria.Iran needs to take all its air defense systems out of Syria.The border crossings between Syria and Lebanon needs to be monitored to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah from Syria.The border crossings between Iraq and Syria needs to be monitored to prevent infiltration of Shiite militias into Syria from Iraq.Netanyahoo also asked for a pink pony.

(Whoa! The Terminator as a Submarine! Totally Cool, and INTELLIGENT, too.)

“The AI has no soul. It is perfect for this kind of job,” the researcher added... They station in dock as conventional submarines. Their cargo bay is reconfigurable and large enough to accommodate a wide range of freight, from powerful surveillance equipment to missiles or torpedoes.